Ghost in the Shell Kinect

Have you ever fancied diving into the cyberspace in Ghost in the Shell "Solid State Complex" series? Well now you can thanks to some Microsoft Kinect technology attached to an Apple Mac Mini ^^;

A developer called Makoto Hara at dev company Kayac decided one day that he wanted to be in cyberspace. He got hold of the Microsoft Kinect and after attaching it to a Mac, his team then went and wrote this GITS SAC Cyberspace program. Took them about 2 months which included research while working with Production IG on visuals.

The setup can be experienced at the Parco in Shibuya (the one opposite the Apple store). Anybody can go along and try it out for free. Its been up n running for a while but the last day is tomorrow ^^;

Time to take my first dive into cyberspace. Standing in the dont-shoot-me-please-no-please position enables the system to recognize your body which will let you control the game. The Kinect is in the top middle corner. For folks who are not familiar, Kinect is a device originally developed for the XBOX that recognizes human moment which is used to control whatever in the game.

First time playing with Kinect and was most impressed at the response. I did expect a certain degree or lag or failure to read my body motions but it was spot on which provided a smooth and pleasant gaming experience. Maybe time to get an XBOX if they decide to release a Kinect version of Street Fighter ^^;

You can shift your body left/right, lean back/forwards or step back/forwards to control your floating direction/speed in cyberspace. When Tachikoma comes into view, you would just try to grab it with your arm (or any other part of your body that has fingers/tentacles) which would shoot out some coolsome rings.

The Kinect is attached to a Mac Mini behind the screen. That Mac Mini then sends a signal (cant remember if WiFi or Bluetooth) to another Mac Mini thats inside the left box that you can see in the photo. That Mac Mini has two projectors connected which are in the left and right box.